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Trials and Tribble-ations (episode)
A vengeful Klingon spy takes the Defiant back in time to kill Captain James T. Kirk. Summary Lucsly and Dulmur from Temporal Investigations arrive on DS9 and ask Sisko about a recent temporal incursion in which Sisko took the [[USS Defiant|USS Defiant]] back in time. He tells them the full story may take some time -- no pun intended -- and begins to recount the events leading to the incursion. The Cardassian government had expressed a desire to return one of the Bajoran Orbs, so the Defiant went to Cardassia Prime to collect it. Without knowing which orb it was or even if it were genuine, Captain Sisko secured it in crew quarters to be authenticated on Bajor. Before leaving Cardassia Prime, Barry Waddle came aboard -- a human merchant who had been trapped on Cardassia when the Klingons attacked. He was an elderly, seemingly harmless man. :As the story progresses, Sisko's voiceover ends and we are in the present tense. Halfway back to DS9, Chief O'Brien announces a massive surge in chroniton radiation around the ship as the entire bridge glows brightly. The viewscreen shows nothing but white noise. The ship drops out of warp and decloaks as someone activates the transporter. Sisko orders Lieutenant Commander Dax to get the ship back under cloak as O'Brien repairs the viewscreen. When the image is restored the crew is shocked to see the original [[USS Enterprise (NCC-1701)|USS ''Enterprise]] -- James Kirk's ship -- in orbit of Deep Space Station K-7. They discover that it is stardate 4523.7. The Defiant crew discovers that Waddle stunned the deputy guarding the Orb and transported off the ship. They learn that his real name is Arne Darvin, and he is a Klingon who was altered to look human. The younger Darvin had been -- or rather, is -- on K-7 posing as a Federation official in order to poison a shipment of quadrotriticale and thus sabotage the Federation's efforts to colonize Sherman's Planet. The Defiant crew does not know where Darvin went or what he plans to do, so all they can do is search for him -- and do it without being noticed. The crew discard their 24th century Starfleet uniforms and don Kirk-era uniforms -- Sisko in a gold Command uniform wearing Lieutenant's stripes, O'Brien in a red support uniform and Bashir in Medical blue. Dax appears in female uniform appropriate to the era and Odo and Worf arrive dressed as civilian traders. With a final warning from Sisko to avoid contact with anyone from that time period as much as possible, the crew beams out, with Odo and Worf searching K-7 and Sisko, Dax, O'Brien, and Bashir searching the Enterprise. Aboard the Enterprise, O'Brien and Bashir learn to use an old-style turbolift. They scan for Darvin using their 23rd century tricorders but have no luck. Dax reminisces about the era while she conducts her scans with equally negative results. Meanwhile, aboard K-7 Odo learns that Darvin had been on the station not long ago as he ordered a raktajino in the station's mess hall. While he doesn't know where Darvin is now, the waitress tells him Darvin will be back. Odo watches as Cyrano Jones entices Lieutenant Uhura with a tribble, and when Worf arrives shortly thereafter, Odo has acquired a tribble of his own, which infuriates Worf. He explains that the Klingon Empire once sent hundreds of warriors to eradicate tribbles in the 23rd century. Odo sarcastically asks if they still sing songs about "the Great Tribble Hunt". The Enterprise goes to Red Alert as the [[IKS Gr'oth|IKS Gr'oth]], a Klingon D-7 Battlecruiser, approaches the station. Dax immediately recognizes it as Koloth's ship and wants to meet him, as he was an associate of Curzon. She notes how much fun it would be, but Sisko tells her it would be too much fun and orders Bashir and O'Brien over to K-7. There, they tease Odo and Worf for sitting at the bar while they were crawling through conduits on the Enterprise, but they're interrupted as Pavel Chekov, Montgomery Scott and Freeman enter. O'Brien is convinced that Freeman is James Kirk himself, but a confused Bashir points out that Freeman is actually wearing Lieutenant's stripes. More importantly, the waitress points out Klingons sitting in either corner of the room; however, these Klingons look nothing like Commander Worf. Bashir and O'Brien speculate about genetic engineering and viral mutations but Worf refuses to discuss it. Meanwhile, a Klingon named Korax talks down Chekov and Scotty, who try to restrain themselves. When Korax claims the Enterprise should be hauled off as garbage, Scotty jumps up and punches him. Everyone in the bar quickly joins the fight, including Bashir, O'Brien, Worf, and Odo. Kirk reprimands his crew -- including Bashir and O'Brien -- but releases them. Meanwhile, Odo and Worf have captured Darvin in the midst of the fight on K-7 and have beamed him back to the Defiant. There, he reveals that he plans to kill Kirk with a bomb hidden in a tribble. Sisko and Dax opt to scan the Enterprise using its internal sensors (meaning they must go to the bridge itself) while everyone else searches K-7, excluding Worf. He is excused when Bashir tells Sisko that he is allergic to tribbles (a fib to protect the Klingons pride, as Klingons are not allergic to them, they just can't stand them). After scanning the ship and finding nothing, Sisko and Dax realize that the explosive tribble must be in the cargo holds on K-7. They beam over and search frantically through the hold, finding the explosive tribble just in time to have Major Kira beam it into space before it explodes. The Enterprise crew goes about their business, and the Defiant crew uses the Orb of Time to return to the 24th century. Before they go, Sisko brings a duty roster PADD to Kirk for approval as a pretense for meeting the famed captain. :As the story concludes, Sisko's voiceover resumes and we are back in the present tense. Sisko admits outright that he intentionally violated temporal displacement policy by interacting with Kirk, and he accepts any consequences his actions may carry. However, Dulmur and Lucsly admit there was probably no harm done, conceding that either of them would likely have done the same in Sisko's place. The temporal agents depart quietly, unaware that Deep Space 9 has a new problem - an infestation of tribbles. Memorable Quotes "''Is that a joke?" "No." "Good. We hate those, too." : - Dulmur, Sisko, and Lucsly "I wouldn't take it personally, Worf." "I rather like the way you smell." "Yeah, a sort of earthy, peaty aroma." "With a touch of...lilac." : - O'Brien and Bashir about Worf "The last thing I need is a visit from Temporal Investigations when I get home." :- Sisko "Wait a minute, aren't you two in the wrong colors?" "Don't you know anything about this period in time?" "I'm a doctor, not an historian." "In the old days, operations officers wore red, command officers wore gold, and –" (Dax enters in a mini-skirt.) "And women wore less." "I think I'm beginning to like this period in history..." : - Bashir, O'Brien, Sisko', and Dax after they appear dressed in their TOS style uniforms "Chief, you're supposed to be working." "I'm afraid to touch anything. It's all cross-circuited and patched together. I can't make head nor tails of it!" "Sounds like one of your repair jobs." : - Bashir and O'Brien "Do they still sing songs of the Great Tribble Hunt?" : - Odo, on the Klingon "battle" against the tribbles "Your flap's open." "Excuse me?" "On your tricorder, you're draining power." "Oh, yes, thank you." "He's always doing that." : - Watley, Bashir, and O'Brien "You realize, of course, she was just using you to get to me." : - O'Brien to Bashir "You know, I never met my great grandfather. This could be a pre-destination paradox! Come on, Chief, sure you took elementary temporal mechanics at the Academy? I may be destined to fall in love with that woman and become my own...great-grandfather." "You're being ridiculous!" "Ridiculous? If I don't meet with her tomorrow, I may never be born!" "Chief, are you ready for transport?" "Are we ever." : - Bashir and O'Brien (with a minor interlude by Kira) after meeting Watley again "I can't wait to get back to Deep Space Nine and see your face when you find out that I never existed!" : - Bashir, when O'Brien refuses to believe his theory "I had no idea." "What?" "He's so much more handsome in person. Those eyes!" "Kirk had quite the reputation as a ladies' man." "Not him. Spock." "Let's go." : - Dax and Sisko upon encountering Kirk and Spock "They are Klingons and it is a long story. We do not discuss it with outsiders." : - Worf, when the lack of cranial ridges on Kirk-era Klingons is noted (see below) "I lied to Captain Kirk! I wish Keiko could have been there to see it." : - O'Brien, to Bashir, after O'Brien told Kirk he didn't know who started the fight. "He put a bomb in a Tribble??" : - Sisko upon learning of Darvin's plan. "I don't think we'll be able to access the internal sensors on board K-7." "Then you will have to manually scan every tribble on the station." "Well, there must the thousands of them by now." "Hundreds of thousands." "One million, seven hundred seventy-one thousand, five hundred sixty-one. That's starting with one tribble with an average litter of ten every twelve hours. After three days –" "Thank... you." : - O'Brien, Sisko, Bashir, and Dax during the briefing about the Tribble bomb Background Information Conceiving the Episode * This episode was broadcast the year of Star Trek's 30th anniversary and was written as a tribute to the original series. * An earlier idea for the 30th anniversary episode, conceived by writer Ronald D. Moore, was to revisit Sigma Iotia II, from the episode "A Piece of the Action," where we would discover imitators of Kirk and Spock, as a social commentary on the Trekkie phenomenon. *However, fellow writer Rene Echevarria wanted to revisit a classic episode using original footage. This was made possible by recent technological innovations such as those used in the movie Forrest Gump. *When the writers sat down to decide which episode to use, there was little question that "The Trouble with Tribbles" was the most famous Trek episode, as well as an excellent choice in that it was relatively lighthearted compared to other well-known episodes such as "The City on the Edge of Forever." * In what Ira Steven Behr describes as the most massive coincidence he has experienced, Behr and the other producers were at a pizza parlor in Beverly Hills discussing the possibility of bringing original TOS actors back for this episode when he recognized Charlie Brill (Arne Darvin). Although Behr was hesitant to discuss the matter directly with Brill due to the complications that normally entail Hollywood negotiations, Brill was greatly honored to be given a chance to make history twice and felt that Gene Roddenberry would be proud. Behr later joked that the remarkable turn of events proved God was a DS9 fan. Merging the Past and Present * The writers were initially skeptical about whether creating an episode such as this with the relatively limited budget of a television series would be possible. However, when the visual effects team showed them a clip from "The Trouble with Tribbles," they were unable to tell that an extra person had been added to the scene because the blending was so seamless. * Contrary to the normal technique of "bluescreen" or "greenscreen" shooting, in which the new footage is shot with a blue or green background in order to allow the computer to easily place the characters into another piece of footage, the scene in which Dax and Sisko are working behind Kirk and Spock was shot with an actual set background. This was due to the fact that there was no panel for Sisko and Dax to pretend to repair in the original footage. * Creating the footage for scenes such as the fight with the Klingons took almost a full week to shoot due to the number of components involved and the complexity of staging and other minor details. Normal bluescreen/greenscreen shooting time is half a day. * Everything from the TOS sets was created faithfully right down to the blinking lights on the bridge, which the crew recreated by freeze-framing and painstakingly examining the TOS footage. * The original Enterprise, now in the Smithsonian museum exhibit, had been refurbished and altered slightly over the years. Knowing that fans would inspect every minor detail of this episode for consistency, the staff consulted sketches made for the original series and had a special set of plans made for the new model's construction. They even inspected it with a magnifying glass to ensure that everything was perfect. * The original model of space station K-7 had been lost by the time this episode was made. The recreation used in the new footage was created as faithfully as possible by watching the original episode as any fan might. * The clip featuring Sisko meeting Kirk was created with footage from "Mirror, Mirror" rather than "The Trouble with Tribbles". * When Kirk opens the door to the cargo hold and is pelted with tribbles, a tribble occasionally lands on him every minute or so even after all the tribbles would have fallen out. It is in this episode that we learn the reason: Sisko and Dax are hiding in the cargo hold, scanning all the tribbles and then tossing them out the door. Augment virus (or lack thereof) * The difference in appearance of TOS and TNG/DS9/VOY Klingons, first recognized as canon here, would later be addressed in the Star Trek: Enterprise episodes "Affliction" and "Divergence". There was a conscious effort to keep Worf at a distance from TOS-era Klingons due to the obvious make-up differences. Ronald Moore wrote Worf's explanation (or lack thereof) into the script because he felt that there was "not a single explanation that's less than preposterous" for the make-up differences and he believed that fans could figure out why the Klingons looked so different. Bashir and O'Brien's dialogue concerning the issue had them suggesting reasons, "genetic engineering" or "viral mutation", that had long been proposed by fans as the reasons for the differences. When the "Enterprise" episodes were filmed, the final canon explanation for the difference combined both their suppositions. :For an explanation, see Klingon augment virus. Trivia * The episode earned Emmy nominations for visual effects, art direction, and hairstyling. It was also nominated for a Hugo Award for best dramatic presentation. *When Dulmur references the date of the original incident and Lucsly adds that it was a Friday, it is a reference to the fact that "The Trouble with Tribbles" originally aired on a Friday. *According to Dulmur and Lucsly, this episode takes place "one hundred and five years, one month, and twelve days" after the events of "The Trouble with Tribbles". * Miles O'Brien implies that the original Enterprise has 30 decks during his exchange with Julian Bashir comparing their search on the Enterprise with Worf and Odo's on K-7. * Quark appeared in this episode (memorably homaging the similar tribble covered bartender in the original episode) but Armin Shimerman has no spoken lines. * George Takei (Hikaru Sulu) does not appear in this episode; this was, however, remedied by his appearance in Star Trek: Voyager's 30th Anniversary episode "Flashback". * The names of the temporal investigators, Dulmur and Lucsly, are anagrams of "Mulder" and "Scully", the paranormal investigators of The X-Files, even though the former would be misspelled. * The term "D-7", in reference to the original Klingon battle cruiser, started out as an inside joke between Shatner and Nimoy. It eventually became a reference to this style of battleship, but it wasn't "official" until this episode. The designation had been used since 1979 in the game Star Fleet Battles for that particular class of ship. * It's not surprising that O'Brien believes that Lieutenant Freeman is Captain Kirk - Paul Baxley was a regular stunt double for William Shatner in the original series! * The hostile opinion Klingons have toward tribbles and Worf's story about their eradication is a metaphor for the hunting of rabbits and similar animals due to the threat they once posed to farmers' crops. * The number of tribbles that Dax calculates is the same number that Spock determined in the original episode. * Darvin, posing as Barry Waddle, claims he deals in (among other things) kevas and trillium, the two materials Mr. Spock claimed he dealt while posing as an Organian citizen in "Errand of Mercy." Cast trivia * David Gerrold, writer of "The Trouble With Tribbles", can be seen in two scenes, playing an Enterprise crewman. He is the gray-haired man who passes Sisko and Dax when the Enterprise goes to red alert; Bashir and O'Brien later see him petting a tribble in the corridor. Gerrold thought the episode was "one of the cleverest Star Trek scripts I've ever read". * The permission of the TOS actors had to be sought to use their performances in the various episodes the archive footage was taken from. It took the producers three months to negotiate for the use of the footage. Walter Koenig remarked he was paid "eight times more" for the use of his likeness than he was for the original episode. * Koenig himself visited the sets and showed Colm Meaney and Alexander Siddig how to properly interact with the set pieces. Behind the scenes * Due to the complexities of recreating TOS sets, Herman Zimmerman nearly made a set that would have looked three-fourths the size it should have when seen through the lens of a camera. * According to Terry Farrell, it was easier to interact with stock footage than real people, due to the fact that they could watch the existing footage and observe exactly what the other person would be doing in the scene. * Jadzia Dax's enthusiasm about the 23rd century and her desire to revisit old friends was the writers' avenue by which to convey their own enthusiasm about writing the episode. It was also intended to represent the way fans of TOS would feel when watching the fusion of past and present Trek series. * When Jadzia and Benjamin Sisko enter the corridor aboard the Enterprise, the reactions from the actors are genuine, as they had not been on the set prior to that shot and were truly amazed by how faithfully the set recreated the look and feel of TOS. This technique is commonly used in Hollywood; for example, two performers whose characters will be meeting for the first time may be kept separate prior to filming in order to evoke a more genuine reaction. * The scene in which Dax is on the bridge of the Enterprise took twelve takes because of the complexity involved in the timing of the scene. * Some of the buttons (on the Enterprise control panels) in the original footage had in fact been jelly beans; in fact, at the end of filming the original episode, Shatner ate one, remarking "I've been wanting to do this for hours." * Reportedly, the DS9 stunt crew had both a challenge and a "good time", adjusting to the 'old-school' brawling style used in this episode's fight scenes. Literature * This episode is summarized in the novel ''Trials and Tribble-ations''. The Enterprises *This is the first appearance of the actual Enterprise since its destruction in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock; though the bridge of the Enterprise did appear in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Relics, it was merely a holodeck recreation. * This episode also contains the first reference to the new ''Sovereign''-class ''Enterprise''-E. After Sisko mentions the Defiant was in front of the Enterprise, Dulmur tells him to be more specific, as there had been five. Lucsly corrects him and says there had been six. As the film, Star Trek: First Contact hadn't premiered yet. DVD *This episode is featured in the Time Travel and Klingon Fan Collective DVDs. It is also obviously included in the DS9 Season 5 DVD. Links and References Main Cast * Avery Brooks as Benjamin Sisko * Rene Auberjonois as Odo * Michael Dorn as Worf * Terry Farrell as Jadzia Dax * Cirroc Lofton as Jake Sisko * Colm Meaney as Miles O'Brien * Armin Shimerman as Quark * Alexander Siddig as Julian Bashir * Nana Visitor as Kira Nerys Guest Stars *Jack Blessing as Dulmur *James W. Jansen as Lucsly *Charlie Brill as Arne Darvin/Barry Waddle *Leslie Ackerman as the Waitress *Charles S. Chun as the Engineer *Deirdre Imershein as Watley *Mark Allen Shepherd as Morn (uncredited) *David Gerrold as Enterprise crewman (uncredited) Cast of "The Trouble with Tribbles" *William Shatner as James T. Kirk *Leonard Nimoy as Spock *DeForest Kelley as Leonard McCoy *Walter Koenig as Chekov *Nichelle Nichols as Uhura *James Doohan as Scotty *Stanley Adams as Cyrano Jones *Paul Baxley as Freeman *Whit Bissell as Mr. Lurry *Charlie Brill as Arne Darvin *Michael Pataki as Korax *Guy Raymond as Bartender *David L. Ross as Galloway *William Schallert as Nilz Barris *Eddie Paskey as Leslie *William Blackburn as Hadley (uncredited) *Dick Crockett as the bald Klingon References alternate timeline; Antarean glow water (Antares system); auxiliary communications juncture; Bajor; Bajorans; Cardassia Prime; Cardassians; Cestus III; chicken sandwich; chroniton radiation; cloaking device; coffee; command division; ''Constitution''-class; D7 class; Dax, Curzon; Dax, Emony; Deep Space K-7; Denebian slime devil (Denebian); Department of Temporal Investigations; ''Defiant'', USS; duotronic sensor system (duotronics); Elementary Temporal Mechanics; ensign; ''Enterprise'', USS; ''Enterprise''-E, USS; fish juice; food processor; Friday; GNDN; Gorn; ''Gr'oth'', IKS; Hall of Warriors; internal sensors; Koloth; Klingons; Klingon battle cruiser; Klingon Empire; Klingon Intelligence; Klingon Imperial Fleet; kevas; ''Lexington'', USS; lieutenant; lilac; medical tricorder; ''Nash'', USS; navigational computer; operations division; O'Brien, Keiko; Ol' Miss; Orb of Prophecy; Orb of Time; Orb of Wisdom; predestination paradox; quadrotriticale; raktajino; red alert; shore leave; Spican flame gem (Spica); Tarkalean tea (Tarkalean); temporal violation; time loop; transporter; transtator; tri-cobalt device; tricorder; trident scanner; Trills; trillium; tribbles Category:DS9 episodes de:Immer die Last mit den Tribbles nl:Trials and Tribble-ations